It's the kids' social network, you're just old.

> you just have intact brain

Fixed a bit.

As much as I want to agree with you, the people who like TikTok make up a significant amount of the population, and their opinions do matter--arguably more than yours, due to sheer numbers.

Smugly dismissing them doesn't do you any favors except for making you feel good about yourself for a few seconds.

You’d be surprised how many people don’t give a shit about TikTok. It’s just another blip in history like Facebook, Instagram, Vine, MySpace and others before them.

All of those were extremely influential and half of them had enough power to select a president.

Regarding "why care." It's where a shockingly large portion of voters and adults get their "news."

• 43% of US 18-29 year olds regularly get news on TikTok

• Half of US adults get news on TikTok, 1 in 5 US "regularly" do so

• This is 2 points less than Twitter and two points more than Facebook

Data from Pew Research (Sep 2025): https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/09/25/1-in-5-am...

The way it starts is you pass videos back and forth with a friend. Then you find yourself chatting in the same app.

I'm mindful that it's less secure than other apps, but for a lot of chats it doesn't matter.

You say that like the typical 18 year old has any idea what they're doing when it comes to proper encryption and communication safety. That is never going to be the case.

It's a communication channel attached to the most popular social network for young people. Obviously they're going to use it a lot. They use it for the extreme convenience.

>never going to be the case.

And in a perfect world essentially shouldn’t have to be, at least inside expensive walled garden app stores.

They might understand e2ee but not care.

Says someone who has never sent a message to a friend over DM on TikTok.

Hopefully

Exactly.

Thankfully